


break down; rebuild

by moxuanyus



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27947003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moxuanyus/pseuds/moxuanyus
Summary: The man formerly known as Kevin Legnard is left riddled with holes, an empty shell. Returning from that place is no easy feat, and certainly not one accomplished alone. But piece by piece, with helping hands, he may be able to build himself into someone new.
Kudos: 7
Collections: Pandora Hearts Reverse Bang 2020





	break down; rebuild

It’s absurd to be treated this way -- so kindly, so acceptingly. These people have no idea what he’s done, yet they’ve taken him in, cleaned him up. He hasn’t told them what he’s done, either. He didn’t even know what to tell them to call him, at first. It should have been easy. He hasn’t forgotten the name, after all. But he’s not Kevin anymore; he doesn’t feel like he is, or maybe he doesn’t want to be, or feel he deserves to be.

He failed. It hurts. Even changing the past wasn’t enough, and now, after all he’s done and all he’s given up, it seems as if there’s nothing left. Maybe that’s the truth of it -- Kevin is gone. And now he’s as empty as the place his left eye used to be.

Except he feels filled to the brim with anguish, sorrow, frustration, pain. Maybe that’s why he puts his fingers into the empty socket, makes it bleed. It gives physical form to what he can’t stop feeling, no matter how he tries. He often thinks the emptiness is better, yet when someone catches him and tries to stop him, he lashes out.

Pitiful. He’s pitiful. There’s nothing he can do.

He can’t even shake these people off. They don’t seem to care what he’s done. Even if they ask, they easily back off. Yet they don’t give up on him. Before he knows what’s happening, before he can have any say in the matter (though he hasn’t given them reason to believe he’ll say much of anything at all), it’s been decided they’ll be cutting his hair. It’s not until Sheryl is observing him, looking critically at his appearance that he registers just how unkempt his hair has become. He can’t fault her, even if it makes him irritable like everything else. Truthfully, too, he knows she means no ill.

“Does it bother you much?” she asks.

The hair itself doesn’t, for now, but he can see her daughter, Shelly, looking on in agreement now (“Even a little, and it will get worse if the ends aren’t trimmed up!”). So it seems best to nip the problem in the bud.

“Cut it short, then.”

It will keep the problem at bay longer. And it feels fitting, after leaving a life and entire identity behind.

The two of them don’t second guess even once. In unison, they give a single nod, and haul him off to do as he said -- each on one of his arms.

It’s sad. It hurts. But it’s heartwarming -- dully, vaguely. They care about this small matter, about his comfort and convenience. He doesn’t care about it, and doesn’t deserve to have someone care. But they do. And their warm attitudes, their easy, bright affection, and strong wills may just be a new foundation for him -- for whoever he’ll become in this life where he is no longer Kevin. Their persistence and unwavering care have begun the slow work of patching the holes and empty spaces in his heart.

Still, he’s hardly present, though everything seems to be bustling around him. Half of the trip is a blur, yet now he’s seated in a chair with Sheryl behind him. He’s hardly realized where he is before the affair is miraculously done. He only recognizes it as finished when Shelly holds a mirror up for him to see the final result.

The look of surprise on his face in the mirror is a surprise in itself. He only knew his hair was becoming a nuisance because he could feel it, he realizes. He can’t even figure out when the last time he looked at his appearance was. Part of the shock is simply seeing himself -- hair freshly trimmed, choppy, cut just right to cover his missing eye. Between the change to his face and his hair, he feels even more strongly that he’s no longer the same person.

Maybe this is what he needs: a clean break.

Break.

That will do.

“Well?” Sheryl prompts, still behind him, unable to even attempt to read his expression.

“Fine,” he answers, standing to leave, to think about how to craft the rest of his new identity. Some part of him is coming back to life, slowly, but just enough to remind him only after he’s left the room that he ought to thank them for the effort.

So he’ll do it later.

Right this moment, he needs to immerse himself in books. Should Break be the first name of this new person, or the surname? The answer presents itself when he finds a name to compliment it: Xerxes. It means “hero among heroes” and is, of course, by no means a form of self praise. It’s just the opposite. He may no longer be Kevin, but that doesn’t mean he’s allowed to forget. He’ll inherit Kevin’s will, and carry his sins. His new name will be a reminder that even a hero among heroes can break.

Xerxes Break.

When he approaches Sheryl later to thank her, she doesn’t bring up his abrupt departure earlier. Unfortunately, that may be par for the course; he’s been guilty of worse manners throughout his stay here thus far. And despite that fact, he’s received continuous hospitality, kindness, and support.

“Did you find something of interest to you? The library seems to have immersed you. I was glad to see it.” Her smile suggests, too, that she didn’t wish to disturb him, though she had likely watched him with relief and fondness.

“Yes. Thank you for allowing me to research.” His head is bowed, and he isn’t making eye contact just now. He can almost sense Sheryl’s soft expression, though. She doesn’t ask what he was researching just like she hasn’t asked the details of how he came to be here. And anyway, she may be able to infer the answer -- to one, momentarily, or perhaps to both. He may not have been his sharpest these past weeks (or has it been months? his sense of time has been all but decimated), but it doesn’t escape him that Sheryl is sharp herself.

Regardless, they’ve all gone on long enough referring to him without a name. The whole household has been beyond gracious.

He looks up to meet her eye, then, and introduces himself. “Please call me Xerxes Break. And thank you for earlier as well.” This is, quite possibly, the most verbal he’s been since arriving here.

Sheryl continues smiling. It’s gentle, and where the expression could easily have made him feel like withdrawing, hers manages not to do so. Or has he grown and changed enough not to be so fragile? No, while that may also be true, he does believe there’s something unique to Sheryl. She can be stern, and she can be steadying. She’s a woman who knows her strength, and uses it appropriately.

“You’re quite welcome. Be it for the trimming or the use of the library.”

Her smile is a little sly, then, noting his failure to specify precisely what his thanks are being given for.

“Both of those and more. I ought to be thanking you for all you’ve done since I arrived here.” The polite speech, his manners, feel foreign after being so taciturn and surly. Yet he knows them well.

He does not know how much of his past self he will carry forward as Xerxes Break, but he’s resolved; he has no intention of forgetting who he was or thinking those sins are forgiven. And at any rate, his thanks here are overdue. It’s reasonable, too, to think such manners will be of some use in the future, whatever it may hold.

Break finds a new bit of himself when Reim Lunettes next visits. Of course, to this point, he had been no more responsive, no warmer to Reim than to any of the ladies of the house. He had been silent, cold, lashed out, been ornery. In fact, Reim may be among the Rainsworths in seeing Break at his worst.

Reim seems pleasantly surprised, seeing Break upon his next visit. He blinks, noting the cleaned up appearance Break has assumed, and the presence and warmth in his eye. Comparably, of course, there are little of those things in Break’s eye when stood up against anyone else about the Rainsworth estate. But compared to the way he must have looked just a week or two ago (and his sense of time is improving; it’s almost certainly a week or two), the improvement must be enormous.

Break pulls an overly serious, bewildered expression. “What is it? Do I have something on my face?”

“Ah, no, no, nothing like that,” Reim is quick to clarify. That’s enough to confirm that he’s the overly serious type, as far as Break is concerned. The more he comes out of his fog, the more he observes, and has genuine reactions to. His response to this observation is to think that someone like this could be fun to tease, just a bit.

Break sulks, exaggeratedly. “It’s not nice to stare.”

It gets the desired effect -- a bit of scrambling for Reim to explain himself -- and Break finds himself laughing. He can’t remember the last time he laughed. It feels like it’s been a century, more than just in the sense that he had vanished into the Abyss for approximately the duration of one. At least, that’s true as far as this world is concerned.

Reim doesn’t seem put off by this, however. On the contrary, Break finds he’s smiling. He feels a bit more prone to withdraw here than he did with Sheryl, but Reim finds a proposal appealing enough to prevent that: “What do you say to a drink?”

Break finds himself agreeing, lured in by the prospect. Drinking is another thing he can’t recall his last time partaking in. He expects to drink Reim under the table, unless time has sorely impacted his tolerance for alcohol. Yet, he’s pleasantly surprised to find that Reim is quite the heavyweight.

“I never took you for such a heavy drinker,” Break tells him, both impressed and taking another pass at teasing him. After all, he’s such the serious, busy, over-working type in all that Break can recall about him.

“Don’t be so quick to judge by appearances.” Reim almost seems to be scolding him, but Break doesn’t mind it, even if he was judging by a bit more than appearances to begin with. Rather than mind it, Break feels in that moment that perhaps he’s found a companion -- a drinking buddy, at the very least.

The only disappointment comes when he realizes how little the alcohol is affecting him. In fact, it seems to have no impact on him whatsoever, no matter how much he drinks. He’s stopped picking at his eye socket and making it bleed, and he supposes this rules out another less than healthy coping method -- more or less. It certainly won’t become an addiction, at any rate. But for the taste, the company, the atmosphere… Break sees no reason not to still indulge. It might be fun to see who’s fooled by his impression of being drunk along the way.

If he continues drinking with Reim as he foresees, the man might come to know him all too well to be fooled. But Break finds he’s interested in that. He wants to see how long they keep it up, how observant and perceptive Reim is. There are still parts of himself, parts of Kevin, that he intends to keep to himself. But it may not be so bad to foster this connection, and pledge loyalty to the house that has shown him so much kindness.

He doesn’t come to the decision quickly or easily. It’s difficult and painful. He’s lost those he cared for and pledged to serve before. It could happen again. But it is with a bittersweet feeling lingering in his chest that Break has come to feel that this is his real second chance. Life is not meant to rewind. He was always meant to move on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the mods of this event for running something that allowed me to finally motivate myself to write for Pandora Hearts! And leading to more fanworks for it in general. Thank you, too, to my artist for drawing a lovely piece and allowing me to write for it, and to explore Break. Please check out their piece! https://twitter.com/qpeura/status/1336177796754903042?s=20 Next, thank you to Lauren for betaing <3 And thank you so much for reading!


End file.
